The increased use of computers to request, transmit, and store information has caused an expansion in the amount of information stored on computer systems. The expanded amount of data stored on computer systems has also caused an increase in the amount of data that is accessed through the computer systems. To handle this increase in the amount of information, computer systems have developed schemes to store the large amounts of data. However, some of these schemes to store the data are propriety formats and protocols that when utilized only provide access to the data stored on that computer system.
The increased use of computers also has lead to a large number of services that are provided through web servers over the world wide web. The increased use of the world wide web has changed the dynamics of many business applications from a client—server architecture to a web server—web browser architecture. The web architecture allows for users to access applications from almost any location by using a commonly configured web browser.